National Security Agency Chief to Speak on UC San Diego Campus
San Diego, January 21, 2015 — Few institutions have ignited such passionate public debate over their roles and activities than the National Security Agency (NSA). As the lead agency for the U.S. government on cryptology, its missions encompass collecting foreign information for intelligence purposes and preventing foreign adversaries from gaining access to U.S. national-security information.
To learn more about the current state of NSA, especially in the aftermath of revelations from the Snowden affair, UC San Diego will host a conversation with Admiral Michael Rogers, the commander of U.S. Cyber Command and NSA director, titled “Challenges and Opportunities in the Interconnected World.”
The discussion will take place at 9:30 a.m. on Thursday, Feb. 5, in Atkinson Hall's Calit2 Auditorium of the Qualcomm Institute at UC San Diego. Light refreshments will be served at 9 a.m. Registration, at admiralrogers.eventbrite.com, is required.
Adm. Rogers will be speaking at a critical time. Last November, just six months after he took over at the NSA, Rogers warned the U.S. House of Representatives' Intelligence Committee that the U.S. should expect a major cyber attack against the U.S. in the next decade. "It's only a matter of the 'when', not the 'if', that we are going to see something dramatic."
Barely one month later, North Korea reportedly launched one of the largest cyber attacks on record -- primarily against Sony and other Hollywood studios -- and the U.S. retaliated by briefly shutting down North Korean access to the Internet.
Attendees at Adm. Rogers' talk will also be eager to hear whether the NSA is planning to overhaul the way it collects and searches data on millions of American phone calls. In late November he said the orders from the White House were to continue the current surveillance program until Congress passes a law to restrict or revise the program.
Rogers has spent most of his career working in information-warfare assignments, including as director for intelligence for the Joint Chiefs of Staff and U.S. Pacific Command, and most recently as Commander, U.S. Fleet Cyber Command/ U.S. Tenth Fleet.
His visit is being coordinated by the UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation and the Office of Research Affairs.
Media Contacts
Doug Ramsey, (858) 822-5825, dramsey@ucsd.edu or Paul K. Mueller, 858-534-8564, pkmueller@ucsd.edu